It's my pleasure.
That's an interesting point about the position taken by the PL's independent commission, and got me thinking. The PL's PSR are more generic than the FFP ones, which are quite specific.
FFP goes into detail about owner investment, about allowable expenditure and other things. The PL Handbook only talks about submitting accounts, and the process for doing that, acting in good faith, and generic requirements like that. The only area they go into specific detail on is associated party transactions.
So the commission won't have any empirical yardstick to judge our charges against. They could, for example, say that the Etisalat sponsorship (where ADUG seemingly paid upfront before being reimbursed) was not done in good faith. They could take the same view of the Mancini contract, or the players' image rights payments. That's potentially a very different test to the PSR or FFP financial calculations, or CAS declaring that there was no evidence of disguised owner investment within the Etihad contract.
CAS essentially asked:
- Did Etihad pay what was in the contract?
- Was any of that sponsorship funded by Sheikh Mansour?
- If not, how was the additional money due funded?
- Did Etihad pay a fair market price?
- Did City provide adequate exposure for Etihad as part of that contract?
They were happy that there was an acceptable answer for all those questions.
Asking "Did City act in good faith?" is more subjective. Having said that, I'm sure we'll be bringing the CAS output as part of our evidence, and I think they'd be foolish to ignore it.
